Haji et al. 2025 - Toxic elements in creams and foundations

Haji, Kombo, and Mohamed measured toxic elements in seven creams and three foundation products using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence. The cream group contained detectable mercury, bismuth, lead, cadmium, and copper, while the foundation group contained niobium, tellurium, copper, tantalum, and total arsenic. The most certification-relevant findings are extremely high mercury in one whitening cream, lead above the cited 20 ppm cosmetic limit in one cream, and cadmium in the same cream matrix.

Key numbers

All values are source-reported ppm, equivalent to mg/kg for these finished-product matrices.

Cream products

Table 2 summarizes the detected-metal ordering in creams as Hg > Bi > Pb > Cd > Cu; arsenic, niobium, antimony, tellurium, and tantalum were below detection in the cream group.

The descriptive-statistics table reports cream means of Cu 0.6 ppm, Cd 3.3 ppm, Hg 20,014.3 ppm, Pb 8.0 ppm, and Bi 9,385.7 ppm. The text states that the highest Hg value exceeded the WHO/FDA limit for skin and lightening creams and that the 56.0 ppm Pb value exceeded the source’s cited 20 ppm maximum permissible limit.

Foundation products

Table 2 summarizes the detected-metal ordering in foundations as Nb > Te > Cu > Ta > As; cadmium, antimony, mercury, lead, and bismuth were not detected in foundations.

The descriptive-statistics table reports foundation means of Cu 9.3 ppm, total As 2.7 ppm, Nb 12.7 ppm, Te 18.0 ppm, and Ta 4.7 ppm.

Methods (brief)

The authors analyzed seven cream products and three foundation products using an energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (Rigaku NEX CG). The assessed elements were Cu, Cd, Nb, Ta, Hg, Pb, Bi, total As, Sb, and Te, reported in ppm. The PDF does not report wet-chemistry digestion, LOD/LOQ values, or arsenic/mercury speciation; arsenic is therefore routed only as total arsenic context and mercury as total mercury.

Implications

Certification: This source is direct finished-product occurrence evidence for skin-lightening creams and foundation-type cosmetics. It is not food evidence and should not enter dietary benchmark pools.

Courses: Useful as a high-contrast example of how skin-lightening products can contain intentionally or unintentionally high mercury and lead, while other face cosmetics may show different element patterns.

App: Supports personal-care risk flags for skin-lightening creams and face/foundation products, especially for markets where informal or imported cosmetics are common.

Microbiome: No microbiome data.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• skin-lightening-cream
• makeup-foundation-powders-blush
• face-neck-leave-on-skin-care
• mercury-total
• lead
• cadmium
• arsenic-total
• copper
• tellurium

Verification notes

• DOI and citation metadata were verified from the PDF first page: DOI 10.37871/jbres2072, Journal of Biomedical Research & Environmental Sciences, volume 6 issue 2, February 2025, pages 197-203.
• The source reports brand names for individual cosmetics. This page does not reproduce brand-level tables and instead preserves category-level findings and source-reported maxima, consistent with the brand firewall.
• The PDF has internal wording errors and one likely abstract typo stating the highest Bi value was found in a cream while also naming a different product; the numerical maxima are retained as reported.
• Frontmatter preserves source-reported Te, Bi, Nb, and Ta because the paper reports them in the product matrices. [[metals/tellurium]] exists as a source-map stub; Bi, Nb, and Ta do not yet have dedicated metal pages, so they are not listed under “Wiki pages this source may touch” until routing vocabulary expands.
• matrices: [cosmetic-personal-care] follows the established cosmetic-source convention used by sibling personal-care source pages, even though that bare-string matrix is not represented in the public taxonomy snapshot.
• Evidence Fitness: EF-2 / routeable small-panel occurrence evidence for finished cosmetic products. Limitations: n=10, unclear sampling frame, no LOD/LOQ, XRF method only, and no mercury or arsenic speciation.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.